I just finished re-reading Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, which is a great book on writing. up there with Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones. I had forgotten lots of the things that Anne says about writing. it was good to remember that I really do lots of the “right” things along the lines of being a good writer. Sometimes, I guess because I’ve never really been published (somehow the stuff I’ve published never seems to “count” in my own mind but for some reason I still am perversely pleased that my picture is on a book jacket, even if it is in a group of contributing authors) on my own with a “real” press, I think that I am not a real writer.
But this book that a friend recommended, Heather Sellers’ Page After Page, has me nailed. She talks about all the things that writers do (look at the world as something to write about, make notes about everything, carry paper to write on everywhere you go, capture a moment/conversation/mood in a frenzy, etc.), and I do all of them. The best thing she has said so far in the book (I’m about half-way through it) is that writers know they are good and think they suck all at the same time. and that is so true about me. Even when I know I am writing well, I still anguish over every last thing I write. Even though I’ve generally had good feedback about my writing, I still think it sucks. It is this tension, and the ability to hold such a tension, that leads to good writing. Which is remarkably reassuring in some neurotic kind of way.
Anyway, all that is prelude to the fact that I’m trying to plan a time to get away to write. I’ve been promising myself that I would do this since the winter I was pregnant with E. T even says now that he thinks he could handle both children for a night without me. So some time this fall, I’m going to try to spend a night away from E and see how it goes. Who knows, I might be like white trash with new money and not know what to do with myself and squander the time with bad decisions and stupid moves. Or I might actually get something accomplished. I don’t know. But it is fun to think about being away from the children, if only for a short time. And even more fun to think about writing in longer spurts than the 15-20 minutes a day I try to squeeze in around naps and snacks and playing outside and laundry.
